Pervasive search architecture

ABSTRACT

A pervasive search architecture that indexes personal content of a querying user and made accessible to the user by other users. A compute node of a personal content location facilitates index generation and serve of the index. The index is generated for personal content stored at the personal content location. For a given content location, the index may encapsulate content stored in a set of locations with access permissions. The indexing application runs periodically at the personal content location and incrementally indexes content that is added to the shared locations. The same application allows the user to configure locations with the desired access permissions for participation in the search.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of and claims priority to U.S.Non-Provisional patent application Ser. No. 14/061,000 filed on Oct. 23,2013, entitled “PERVASIVE SEARCH ARCHITECTURE,” which is herebyincorporated by reference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

Online search is presently restricted to public documents that areonline, which are hosted and made available on servers. Current searchengines crawl and index these publicly available documents of the weband generate an index that essentially maps search terms or queries to alist of relevant documents. However, this search index has no access topersonal data that reside on personal devices such as hard drives andother data storage devices, storage devices that account for a vastamount of content. Moreover, even if users share their personal data,there are no means to index and make this data available to the searchesperformed by the users with which they choose to share the data.

SUMMARY

The following presents a simplified summary in order to provide a basicunderstanding of some novel embodiments described herein. This summaryis not an extensive overview, and it is not intended to identifykey/critical elements or to delineate the scope thereof. Its solepurpose is to present some concepts in a simplified form as a prelude tothe more detailed description that is presented later.

The disclosed architecture is a pervasive search model that broadens theamount of relevant content considered for return as search results to auser submitting a query (the querying user) by now also consideringdirectly the user's pervasive network—the storage locations ofaccess-restricted (personal) content stored on the user's personalcontent locations (e.g., personal devices) and not normally accessibleby other users, the access-restricted content of other users enabled forsharing to the querying user, and content directly accessible from otherpublically available sensor systems such as traffic cameras, outdoorenvironment monitoring sensor systems, etc., as made accessible to theuser based on access criteria.

The search model is “pervasive” in that the search process now extendsto personal content, which is well beyond that content which is normallyassociated with search (i.e., the Internet). This includes the personalcontent of the querying user and the shared content of friends of theuser, for example. The model is pervasive as to personal content of thequerying user stored at personal content locations of other user devicesas well, such as a personal camera, smartphone, etc., which can also bemade accessible for search as permitted by access permissions or othercriteria such as physical closeness.

The disclosed pervasive search model enables the search and return ofpersonal content results, using local and/or distributed indexes storedat one or more of the personal content locations (e.g., as may beassociated with devices) and potentially accessible sensor systems ofthe pervasive network. Thus, the overall pervasive search process isdistributed by being performed directly in association with the personalcontent locations, as well as in combination with the search performedby the online search engine(s). However, the online search need not beperformed at all when choosing to limit the search to only the pervasivenetwork of personal content locations.

The pervasive search architecture is enabled by compute nodes. Eachpersonal content location of a pervasive network may have an associatedcompute node. Each personal content location may also have a searchengine; however, this is not a requirement. When a query is submittedfor processing by a querying user, the query is sent to the onlinesearch engine (existing web-based engine(s)) for processing. The onlinesearch engine processes the query against its online index of onlinecontent, and also submits the query back to the personal contentlocation from which the user is making the query for processing andreturn of personal content of the querying user and any other personal(e.g., shared) content from the personal content location (of the useror other users).

A “pervasive” search engine (a search engine associated in some way withthe pervasive network and/or personal content locations of the pervasivenetwork) receives the query from the web-based search engine or from anapplication of the personal content location from which a search isinitiated and interacts (e.g., passes the query to the compute node,although this may not be required for searching only at the personalcontent location) with the personal content location compute node toaccess the compute-node generated index and process the query againstthe compute-node generated index of personally stored content of theuser's personal content location.

It is the compute nodes that serve up the index for query processing bythe pervasive search engine, that facilitate query-passing amongdifferent personal content locations (e.g., other personal contentlocations of the user, other personal content location of other users,etc.) and that make the personal content (e.g., shared) available foraccess. The compute node enables access to the personal content index(“serves” the index) by the pervasive search engine. The pervasivesearch engine processes the query against the personal content index,and the compute node returns zero, some, or all of the personal contentas results to the pervasive search engine.

In furtherance of returning relevant personal content from otherpersonal content locations of the pervasive network, the query receivedat the personal content location of the querying user (now, the firstpersonal content location) is then sent from the compute node of thefirst personal content location to a compute node of a second personalcontent location of a second user who is sharing access to some or allof their personal content with the querying user. The second computenode on the second personal content location has already prepared asecond index (or updated version thereof) that includes the personalcontent (of which shared personal content is a part) and serves thesecond index of the second personal content location to the compute nodeof the first personal content location. A pervasive search engineassociated with the first personal content location then processes thequery against the served index of the second personal content location,and the searched documents are requested from the second personalcontent location. The compute node of the second personal contentlocation then returns the relevant shared personal results back to thecompute node of the first personal content location. The online searchresults and the pervasive network search results are then presented tothe querying user.

In an alternative implementation, a pervasive search engine associatedwith the second personal content location interfaces to the compute nodeof the second personal content location (now, the second compute node)and the second compute node serves the second index to enable processingof the query and also serves the personal content results back to thepervasive search engine of the second personal content location, whichpervasive search engine then sends the results back to the pervasivesearch engine of the first personal content location for presentation.

The search application being used by the first personal contentlocation, for example, a browser, then receives the online results backfrom the online search engine, and the pervasive network resultsdirectly from the pervasive search engine of the first personal contentlocation, for presentation.

The compute node of a personal content location comprises an indexcomponent and a serve component, which are one or more applications thatperform index generation of personal content at a given personal contentlocation and enable access to the index to facilitate return of theassociated personal content for the search. The index is generated for aset of content stored at the personal content location (e.g., a device)and which maps tags to a piece of content. For a given personal contentlocation, the index may encapsulate content stored in a set ofdirectories with access permissions. The application(s) for generatingthe index run periodically at the personal content location andincrementally index data that are added to the shared directories and/ormemory partitions, as well for un-shared (“private”) data. The sameapplication(s) can be used to enable the user to configure directorieswith the desired access permissions for participation in the pervasivenetwork search.

The serve component serves the index for queries that are sent to thepersonal content location and return relevant personal content as thepervasive network search results. The serve component checks the ID(identification) of the user issuing the query (the querying user) andassociated access permissions, and then processes the index for datathat is to be shared with that user. The serve component then looks forthe indexed tags that are relevant for the query and returns the path tothe shared personal content that has been shared for the user.

The selectively-networked pervasive compute nodes at different personalcontent locations (e.g., on different storage devices) serve results forqueries issued by the querying user. The selection of compute nodeswhere a given query will be sent depends on the ID of the user and theuser's network of shared data, either the user's own and/or the shareddata of friends in the user's pervasive network.

The pervasive search architecture facilitates search index distribution.An index at a compute node may not always have mappings of tags tocontent—it can be a mapping of tags to a set of other indexes on otherdevices (or data locations). For a given query that reaches that node(the first node), the node can distribute or forward the query to a setof other personal content locations (e.g., compute nodes of otherdevices) depending on the access permissions and shared data on thoseother personal content location. Thus, the query processing can beperformed in a parallel fashion on the several pervasive networkpersonal content locations. Likewise, the results from the severalpersonal content locations may be returned to the first node as eachshared compute node completes.

Alternatively, or in combination therewith, the query forwarding processof a first compute node can be based on indices “known” by the firstcompute node (a query distribution node), rather than sending the queryto all compute nodes of the pervasive network. Thus, personal contentlocations (and compute node thereof) on the pervasive network can shareindex creation data indicating that the personal content location notonly has an index of shared information, but also notifies other computenodes of updates to the index of which any compute node has previouslyknowledge.

This knowledge can be in the form of analyzing one or more indexes thathave been stored (cloned) at the first personal content location (e.g.,on a device) and are known by the first compute node as part of indexredundancy so failure of a sharing personal content location and/or evenanother personal content location of the querying user can be readilyrevived using the cloned index from the first personal content location(and first compute node). Additionally, since the first compute node hascontent knowledge via a locally stored cloned index of the failed oroffline sharing compute node, the first compute node may be able todetermine that the content that could be highly relevant and obtained bywaiting a short period of time (e.g., seconds) before concluding thatthis failed compute node (the personal content location) is not timelycoming back online to the pervasive network, and should be skipped.

For example, a personal user camera (having a personal content location)can be taken on a day trip (off the home network) to capture numerousimages—the camera may be offline to the pervasive network. The cameracompute node of the camera indexes all the captured images taken thatday and other data stored thereon. However, after arriving home, thecamera can be brought online (e.g., via a tethered connection, wirelessconnection, etc.) to the home network (which can be part of a pervasivenetwork), and the captured images searchable by the querying user.Alternatively, the data of the camera can be made online accessible byremoving the storage medium (e.g., flash memory chip) from the cameraand connecting (inserting the flash memory chip) the storage medium to anetworked home computer (that is online to the pervasive network). Theindex generated by the compute node and stored on the storage medium isthen accessible and searchable to return images (personal content)therefrom for a related query from the home computer.

The compute node can also be applied and operate on sensor systems thatutilize hardware sensors to sense physical signals such as environmentalconditions of temperature, humidity, pressure, traffic, etc., andconvert the signals into data. Other sensor systems can employ camerasthat capture image signals of scenes such as traffic movement, streetactivity, etc. These sensor systems can each employ a compute node togenerate indexes of sensed content or data (data “personal” to thesensor system and which may be access-restricted or conditioned to someextent) stored at the system and/or obtained directly from the sensor inrealtime, and then serve the index and relevant data/content back to thequerying user. Thus, the search can be processed directly to the sensorsystem to obtain realtime or substantially realtime results, rather thanaccessing the data from a server some time after the associated eventhas already occurred.

The sensor system data can be restricted access such that access to itsdata is allowed only when certain criteria are met. For example, a userwill only be allowed access to the realtime data of the sensor system ifthe user device is within a predefined distance (e.g., one mile, onehundred feet, etc.) of the system. If so, the sensor system then becomespart of the pervasive network for that user and shares some or all ofthe sensor system personal content until the criteria are (criterion is)no longer met. This capability finds particular use with retail storesthat want to push coupons and deals only to users who are within a shortdistance of the store (a criterion), but not users who are a greatdistance away and are not likely to come to the store for the deal.Thus, the retailer can be selective as to the groups of people the dealsgo to and the distance.

To the accomplishment of the foregoing and related ends, certainillustrative aspects are described herein in connection with thefollowing description and the annexed drawings. These aspects areindicative of the various ways in which the principles disclosed hereincan be practiced and all aspects and equivalents thereof are intended tobe within the scope of the claimed subject matter. Other advantages andnovel features will become apparent from the following detaileddescription when considered in conjunction with the drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates a system in accordance with the disclosedarchitecture.

FIG. 2 illustrates a system that addresses the use of search engineswith compute nodes and pervasive networks.

FIG. 3 illustrates an alternative pervasive network system where apervasive network compute node performs compute node operations for oneor more personal content locations.

FIG. 4 illustrates an alternative system in accordance with thedisclosed architecture.

FIG. 5 illustrates a system that serves web and shared documents assearch results.

FIG. 6 illustrates an indexer component of a pervasive network computenode that generates an index of shared documents of a user device.

FIG. 7 illustrates a serve system of a compute node that serves theindex and relevant documents for an incoming query.

FIG. 8 illustrates a distributed indexing system for compute nodes.

FIG. 9 illustrates an index interface that facilitates updating andaccessing indexes for various content locations.

FIG. 10 illustrates an exemplary user interface for pervasive searchthat enables personal data to be searched and returned for a query.

FIG. 11 illustrates an exemplary user interface for pervasive searchthat enables personal data to be searched and returned for a query.

FIG. 12 illustrates a more detailed example of the pervasive resultspresented in the SERP of the user interface.

FIG. 13 illustrates a method in accordance with the disclosedarchitecture.

FIG. 14 illustrates an alternative method in accordance with thedisclosed architecture.

FIG. 15 illustrates a method in accordance with the disclosedarchitecture.

FIG. 16 illustrates an alternative method in accordance with thedisclosed architecture.

FIG. 17 illustrates a block diagram of a computing system that executespervasive search computing in accordance with the disclosedarchitecture.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

There is much access-restricted personal content that resides withusers, user storage devices, and their social groups, and which isdesired to be made available to search. Personal content includes, butis not limited to, photographs, videos, notes, text documents,spreadsheets, application documents (in general), reviews, receipts,coupons, applications, blog posts, podcasts, audio files, music files,emails and other messages, and 3D (three dimensional) models, just toname a few, that is typically not considered in search, but restrictedin access, and hence, not typically searched as part of web-basedsearches.

Personalized data is being generated in increasingly larger amounts on amonthly basis (e.g., 5 GB) by an average user and stored on personalstorage, such as on personal storage devices (e.g., internal, attached,etc.) that comprise internal hard drives, external serial devices (e.g.,flash drives), and/or cloud storage (e.g., personally managed by theuser or other suitable entity on behalf of the user). Moreover, only afraction of the personal data is being shared (e.g., online orotherwise), with much of the personal data shared through socialwebsites (e.g., Facebook™, Instagram™, Flickr™, YouTube™, etc.).Moreover, a vast amount of the personal data is being generated andstored locally on access-restricted systems such as sensor systems thatinclude cameras (public and user personal) and mobile devices such assmartphones.

The disclosed architecture is a pervasive search model that broadens theamount of relevant content considered for return as search results to auser submitting a query (the querying user) by now also consideringdirectly the user's pervasive network—the personal content storagelocations of access-restricted content stored at the user's personalcontent locations (e.g., personal devices, user's folders, user'sdirectories, etc.) and not accessible by other users, theaccess-restricted content of other users enabled for sharing to thequerying user, and content directly accessible from other publicallyavailable sensor systems such as traffic cameras, outdoor environmentmonitoring sensor systems, etc., as made accessible to the user based onaccess criteria.

The pervasive search architecture is enabled by compute nodes thatoperate in conjunction with a personal content location. The computenode at least generates a private index of personal content of thepersonal content location. When searching both online content andpervasive network content, a query by the user is submitted forprocessing, the query is sent to the online search engine (e.g.,web-based engine(s)) for processing. The online search engine processesthe query against its online index of online content, and also submitsthe query directly to the user personal content location for searchprocessing and return of personal content and any shared personalcontent. A search engine associated with the user personal contentlocation receives the query and interacts with the compute node toprocess the query against stored personal content of the personalcontent location. The compute node enables access to the private indexby the search engine. The search engine processes the query against theprivate index, and the compute node returns personal content as resultsto the search (this can be referred to as the compute node “serving theindex and any associated personal content”). The querying user is thenpresented not only with the standard web-based online results but alsopersonal content results.

More specifically, the disclosed architecture is a pervasive searchparadigm that extends search into personal data that has been madeaccessible by a user and other users, such as on user device(s) and thedevices of other users, private network data sources such as socialnetworks, cloud storage locations, and sensor systems, to name a few,thereby making the personal data of the user and other users indexableand searchable. The architecture enables sharing and search of personaldata at a peer-to-peer level. An index created for each set of personaldata at a personal content location, is held private by the user (owner)of the data and also holds the access permissions for all other users tothat data. The access permissions can be stored separately from, but inassociation with, the index, stored for groups of index items, and/orstored on an item-by-item basis for each item of the index.

The pervasive search model as described herein focuses on the use ofpervasive search engines that are engines other than the web-basedsearch engines (e.g., Bing™); however, this is not to be construed as alimitation in that a web-based search engine could be employed in wholeor in part to facilitate pervasive network search.

The pervasive architecture includes selectively networked (e.g.,accessible through the Internet, enterprises, peer-to-peer connections,etc.) compute nodes to generate indexes and make the indexes accessiblefor queries along with results of the queries (also referred to as“serving” the index and the resulting content). The pervasive searchmodel makes personal data (content) available for search and retrievalby indexing and serving the personal data to users with suitablepermissions to access the personal (and shared) data.

The personal content made available by a user can include documentsstored according to restricted access on the web, personal content ofthe user on one or more local devices/systems of the user, and personalcontent shared by other users in the user's pervasive (personallyaccessible) network. Personal content includes, but is not limited to,photos, videos, text documents, spreadsheets, audio, receipts, coupons,music, podcasts, emails, notes, applications, 3D models, blog posts,etc., any or all of which can be indexed and made available for queryingby the user.

The personal content may include data on mobile devices such as cellulartelephones, smartphones, tablets, for example, as well asInternet-connected cameras that can index (on-the-fly—in realtime) andserve data for search, browse, and discovery to selected users in thecontent-owner's pervasive network. The Internet-connected public camerasare part of a larger set of sensor systems that typically send data todatabases for subsequent access; however, the data from these sensorsystems can now be made available to a given user via the pervasivenetwork, in realtime, as obtained directly from the sensor system basedon access criteria.

The indexes can be generated using any available indexing technique suchas inverted indexes, for example, for personal content at a personalcontent location (e.g., on a device) for the purpose of serving thepersonal documents to queries issued outside the device. Tags and otherproperties of documents are perused and indexed to making the documentsavailable for queries issued by other users on different devices.

The pervasive network comprises compute nodes that provide thecapability to index personal content and serve the index and personalcontent to a query issued by the user. The compute node is essentiallycode that operates on a device to not only generate the index of contentstored at the personal content location, but to also update the indexwhen new and updated content received. The compute node has an indexcomponent (also called an indexer) that generates an index for (pointersto) all shared and non-shared content at the personal content location,and a serve component that serves the generated index and results(personal content of the user and/or other users) for queries directedto that personal content location. The queries may be issued by theowner of the content or by other users in the pervasive network of theowner, which includes friends in the user's social circle or otherusers, for example, to which the owner has made the content available.

With respect to publicly-searchable personal content of a content owner,if the content owner opts to make any piece of the personal contentavailable to everyone, any pertinent query issued by a user may be ableto retrieve that piece of content. However, the personal contentretrieval can be controlled by taking into account other factors(criteria) that must be met before access is allowed (pulled by theuser) and/or the personal content is pushed to the user. These factorsinclude, but are not limited to, the physical proximity of the userissuing the query, degrees of separation (in the social network) betweenthe content owner and query-issuing user, quality measure and relevanceof content, confidence measure of content owner, etc.

The physical proximity of the user includes determining the geographicallocation of the user relative to a business (or other entity of interestsuch as a park, restaurant, etc.), since it may be more beneficial tonotify and/or entice the user to the business location if the user isrelatively close to the business and not of a distance away that theuser is unlikely to travel. The physical proximity in combination withpreferences of the user such as indicating the desire to purchase aspecific product can affect distance of the physical proximity employedfor a specific access to the content and/or push of the content to theuser. The proximity can also be social distance such as how far down thelist of “friends” is a specific user that will be allowed to accessanother's content—is the remote user a friend, or a friend of a friend,etc. Proximity can be by category such that for example, “only otherusers who are skiers”, or “only employees of Microsoft”, “belong to thesame club”, etc.

The confidence measure of the content owner relates to the likelihoodthat the content owner will have content relevant to the query. Forexample, the confidence measure of a content owner who only handles textis low or unlikely to be serving content for a query related topictures. In contrast, if the content owner is a photographer, theconfidence measure is higher that the owner will have images related tothe query.

The quality measure can relate to the ability of the content owner toprovide the desired level of quality of the content. For example, thequality measure of a content owner who only stores low resolution imagesis low or unlikely to be serving content for a query related to picturesof a much higher resolution. In contrast, if the content owner is aphotographer, the quality measure is higher that the owner will havehigh resolution images related to the query for such images.

The degree of separation is similar to the social proximity aspect whichidentifies how socially close or how socially distant is a sharing user.If the sharing user has a larger degree of separation (e.g., a distantuser who may be a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, etc.) fromthe querying user or a sharing content owner, then the associatedcontent of the distant user may not be as relevant. Similarly, if thesharing user has a lower degree of separation (a closer user who may bea friend of a friend), the associated personal content may by morerelevant to the query.

This approach enables retailers and business owners to share coupons,advertisements, and photographs of merchandize, for example, inrealtime, for consumers searching or querying for information in theproximate area. In this way, content owners do not have to publish theircontent and wait for the online crawlers to index and serve thecontent—the content owner can push the content immediately to the useror enable the user device to immediately pull the owner content.

The compute nodes can be distributed nodes that forward a received queryto other compute nodes and then aggregate retrieved documents from thosenodes. A compute node can redirect a user query to other compute nodesthat generate and serve indexes for query processing, and then serve(return) the relevant results. The compute node then aggregates andsends the aggregated content along with the associated contentattributes to the compute node that issued the query.

With respect to local caching and distribution of indexes, indexes,which map tags to content, can be passed between devices with updates tothe location of the content. This enables a distributed cache of indexesby which a piece of content can be accessed through queries routedthrough different devices or nodes of the network. In context of thedevice and the cloud, possible indexing schemes include: a scheme wherethe index stays at its associated personal content location (e.g., amachine or on the machine) and the query is sent to the machine, and ascheme where indices are merged into a primary cloud-based indexaccessible by a personal content location (e.g., a device).

The retrieved personal content can be ranked alongside web content,depending on the user preference and confidence in the user's pervasivenetwork as compared to the web. External storages devices, for example,that do not have a compute node and may not connect to a pervasivesearch engine can still be accessed and searched for personal contentmade available. For example, a personal content location associated witha home computer may have a compute node and associated search engine, aswell as several external (e.g., universal serial bus—USB) storagedevices such as hard drives, flash drives, etc. The externally connectedstorage devices may not include compute nodes; thus, while these storagedevices are not directly connected to the network, the home computer is,and can facilitate indexing and query processing of these externaldevices to obtain relevant content stored thereon.

Additionally, devices/systems/personal content locations that cannot ordo not connect to an online (web-based) search engine can still accessand search personal content made available to such devices. In otherwords, the disclosed architecture also finds applicability to“non-online”, or private networks, such as intranets, enterprisenetworks, home networks, etc. Thus, the pervasive network can extend toany one or more of the devices/systems/personal content locations on theprivate network, without extending search to the web (or onlinenetworks).

Cloud compute nodes can index and serve personal documents for queries.The pervasive search model extends across all personal content whetherlocally available on personal devices/hard drives or available in thecloud. Running a compute node that accesses content at a personalcontent location in the cloud—whether the compute node applications runon a personal machine, a sensor system, or on a cloud server—makescontent in the cloud searchable and accessible to multiple users(depending on the permissions granted by the content owner).

In the case where the personal content locations associated with thedevices, hard drives, or other storage devices are off the network, thecontent may be cached in the cloud with the same indexes and pervasivenetwork permissions so that users can still search and have the sameexperience as if the personal content locations associated with thedevices, hard drives, or other storage devices were available on thepervasive network.

The pervasive search model also enables selective data access forqueries or personalized index serve. The content owner/publisher candefine and restrict who can access and query for the content byselectively allowing users to access the content. This enables aretrieval and ranking system that can be influenced by the content ownerfor queries issued by users in the owner's pervasive network.

The pervasive search model enables indexed and searchable realtime datathat is automatically generated by sensor systems, as described hereinabove. Sensor data that is being generated in realtime can be tagged andindexed by a compute node's index generation component on the sensorsystem. Thus, these sensor systems can be accessed directly (in contrastto obtaining the sensor data stored in a database server) based onindexes which can be served immediately by the index serve component andmade available for incoming queries.

This circumvents the need to host and serve the data on a server. As anexample, a temperature sensor installed in a public space, such as“Bellevue City Center”, can read the temperature and update a locallystored document with the address tag, “Bellevue City Center” and“temperature” tag; the document may be indexed on the sensor system andserved to all suitable users. Any query for the “Bellevue City Centertemperature” may be served the temperature value immediately (directlyfrom the temperature sensor system), thus circumventing the need toupload and store the data on a server and subsequently index the data inrealtime.

The same example can be applied to sensor systems such as trafficcameras, cameras installed in shopping aisles (for realtime inventorysearch), realtime bus transit locations and schedules, sensor systems(e.g., proximity such as defined by a geofence) that when triggeredissue chef's specials on restaurant menus and “lightning” deals/coupons(time-bound deals), personal content updates, for example, photographsand blogs, and any realtime or quasi realtime personal data.

The pervasive search architecture scales for search of realtime and/orquasi-realtime data in contrast to existing systems that cannot scale todata that is being constantly updated. As an example, consider apet-monitoring camera at home that continuously saves the last fewimages of the pet cat on a hard drive that is accessible to thepervasive network. If the user queries for “my cat” at any personalcontent location (e.g., a device), anywhere, the user receives and viewsthose images retrieved by pervasive search, since that data is indexedand served on-the-fly. There is no existing custom content feed thatidentifies a new piece of content to be added to the index based oncontent uploaded or explicitly identified by a user. Moreover, thepervasive search system enables effective querying of data generated bythe Internet of “things” (e.g., non-user generated content, but fromsensor systems such as weather cameras, etc.), and not just contentgenerated by people.

Reference is now made to the drawings, wherein like reference numeralsare used to refer to like elements throughout. In the followingdescription, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details areset forth in order to provide a thorough understanding thereof. It maybe evident, however, that the novel embodiments can be practiced withoutthese specific details. In other instances, well known structures anddevices are shown in block diagram form in order to facilitate adescription thereof. The intention is to cover all modifications,equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of theclaimed subject matter.

FIG. 1 illustrates a system 100 in accordance with the disclosedarchitecture. The system 100 includes an indexer component 102 of acompute node 104 associated with a personal content 106 of a personalcontent location 108 of a content owner 110.

The personal content location 108 can be generally described as relatingto devices, systems, and/or accounts over which the content owner 110exercises some degree of control of the personal content 106 stored inassociation therewith, and the personal content 106 as relating to thedevices, systems, and/or accounts. Thus, the personal content location108 includes, but is not limited to, personal wired and/or wirelessdevices such as personal computers, tablet computers, laptops,smartphones, personal servers, and private networks (e.g., home,business, etc.), as well as access-restricted accounts of personalcontent locations on the Internet (“in the cloud”). The personal content106 can be stored on one or more storage devices of the personal storagelocation 108 such as internal hard drives, externally attached drivessuch as flash drives and hard drives, and network drives (e.g., home,private, cloud etc.), for example.

The system 100 is illustrated in a head-to-head configuration of twopersonal content locations interacting directly with each other;however, it is to be understood that the disclosed architecture providesthe capability to perform pervasive search over many different personalcontent locations and sharing users.

The personal content 106 can include some accessible content (referredto as shared content 112) authorized for access by authorized users, andother content (referred to as private content 114) that is entirelyaccess-prohibited to users other than the content owner 110 (onlyaccessible by the content owner 110).

The indexer component 102 is configured to generate a content index 116of the personal content 112 of the personal content location 108. Theindex 116 can include not only the personal content 106 but thepermissions associated with the private content 114 and the sharedcontent 112. Thus, processing of the content index 116 by a pervasivesearch engine results in handling the indexed content accordingly—onlythe shared content 112 is allowed to be accessed by other compute nodesof other authorized users/systems, and the private content 114 can beaccessed only by the content owner 110 and/or associated content ownersystems.

A serve component 118 of the compute node 104 is configured to send(receives and forwards) a query 120 to a remote compute node 122associated with remote shared personal content 124 of a remote personalcontent location 126. The personal content location 108 is configured toprocess the query 120 using the index 116, and the remote personalcontent location 126 is configured to process the query 120 using aremote content index 128 generated by the remote compute node 122 (morespecifically, a remote indexer component 130). The serve component 118(of the compute node 104) is configured to receive remote results 132 ofthe remote shared personal content 124 from the remote compute node 122.

Results (e.g., results 134) may also be generated from the personalcontent location 108. The remote results 132 from the remote computenode 122 and the results 134 generated from processing the query 120 atthe personal content location 108, are then combined (e.g., aggregatedand ranked) in one or more of various possible ways for presentationwith web-based results, as described in greater detail hereinbelow(e.g., intermixed, as separate groups of remote results 132 and results134, etc.). Presentation can be to the user issuing the query 120 (e.g.,the content owner 110) via a browser application.

Note that the remote compute node 122 of the remote personal contentlocation 126 can have the same components as the personal contentlocation 108, and operates in the same way. For example, the remoteindexer component 130 generates the remote content index 128 of at leastthe remote shared personal content 124 and remote private content 136 ofthe remote personal content 138. The remote index 128 can also includeaccess permissions with each index entry so as to readily determinewhich of the remote personal content 138 is accessible as the remoteshared personal content 124 and which is not (remote private content136). The remote index 128 is then served up for query processing via aremote serve component 140. Provided the content owner 110 has permittedthe shared personal content 112 to be accessed by the remote personalcontent location 126, as the index 116 is served up by the servecomponent 118, a query processed by the remote personal content location126 can then access the shared personal content 112 based on processingof the index 116.

The query processing at the personal content location 108 may be moreextensive than query processing at the remote personal content location126, when the remote personal content location 126 is not of the contentowner 110 but of a different content owner. This is because queryprocessing over personal content 106 of the content owner 110 at thepersonal content location 108 reaches into the private content 114 aswell as the shared content 112, whereas query processing at the remotepersonal content location 126 of a different content owner, as initiatedby the content owner 110, is restricted to only the remote sharedpersonal content 124 that the different content owner has permitted forsharing.

However, as is described hereinbelow, if the remote personal contentlocation 126 is also “owned” by the content owner 110, then queryprocessing at the remote personal content location 126 reaches into theremote private content 136 as well, based on the permissions of theremote index 128 that enable access by the content owner 110 to all ofthe remote personal content 138 of the remote personal content location126.

The compute nodes, and associated devices, systems, accounts having suchcompute nodes, are described as being part of a pervasive network, wherethe given compute node is enabled by the user. In other words, thecontent owner 110 can be given the capability to disable the computenode, when desired. Thus, when disabled, the compute node (device,system, accounts) drops off the pervasive network until re-enabled. Thedevices, systems, and accounts, for example, that choose to consider theassociated personal content as part of the query and search process,utilize the disclosed compute node architecture.

Put another way, the remote shared personal content 124 is personalcontent of a remote shared content owner (e.g., other user, same as thecontent owner 110, other system, etc.). The personal content 106 of thecontent owner 110 is held private from a public user (or system) and theremote shared personal content 124 of the remote shared content owner isenabled (e.g., by permissions) to be accessed by the compute node 104 ofthe content owner 110.

The content index 116 can distributed at one or more other personalcontent locations such as the remote personal content location 126, forexample. The content index 116 is generated and updated in realtime atthe personal content location 108 of the content owner 110. Changes todata at the personal content location 108 can be detected and cause anupdate process to be triggered to update the content index 116.

The remote content index 128 can be made publicly-accessible to a publicuser (or system) based on access criteria. The remote shared personalcontent 122 can be accessed by the public user (or system) based oncriteria that comprises at least one of proximity of the public userissuing the query to the remote personal content location 126, degree ofseparation between the remote personal content location 126 and thepublic user, quality measure and relevance of the remote shared personalcontent 124, or confidence measure of a remote shared content owner ofthe remote shared personal content 124.

The remote personal content location 126 can comprise a sensor system(e.g., weather station, traffic camera, street camera, etc.) configuredto generate realtime sensor data that is indexed in realtime to create arealtime sensor index as the remote content index 128. The sensor systemcomprises the remote compute node 122 configured to, in part, serve therealtime sensor index for search using the query 120 to return theremote results 132 to the compute node 104.

The remote compute node 122 comprises a remote indexer component 130 anda remote serve component 138. The remote indexer component 130 isconfigured to generate the remote content index 128 and the remote servecomponent 138 is configured to serve the remote content index 128 to asearch engine (not shown) to generate the remote results 132 based onthe query 120. The remote serve component 138 is configured to receivethe remote results 132 from the search engine and return the remoteresults 132 to the serve component 118 of the compute node 104.

The serve component 118 is configured to serve the content index 116 forprocessing of the query 120 at the personal content location 108, andpersonal content 106 of the content owner 110 and remote shared personalcontent 124 of the remote personal content location 126 are presentedwith web search results at the personal content location 108. Thecompute node 104 is configured to forward the query 120 to other computenodes of other personal content locations and, as well as aggregate andrank retrieved other content results from the other compute nodes withpersonal content results 134 of the personal content location 108.

FIG. 2 illustrates a system 200 that addresses the use of search engineswith compute nodes and pervasive networks. Search engines can beemployed in various ways. Any one or more of the personal contentlocations (e.g., personal content location 108 and remote personalcontent location 126 of FIG. 1) of the pervasive network can includesearch engines (the programs and instructions that typically enable thequery and search of data and content); however, no personal contentlocation needs to have a search engine. Devices and systems typicallyhave search engines that may be used for local device/system searches,and applications (e.g., browsers) that enable query processing andsearch interaction with networks (e.g., private and public). These samesearch engines and applications can be enabled to operate with thecompute nodes.

The description for system 200 focuses on the use of “pervasive” searchengines—those search engines that may reside at or be associated withthe personal content locations that include compute nodes, and hence,may be considered part of the pervasive network (i.e., personal contentlocations of networks having compute nodes enabled for search), and/oras a separate (non-compute node) search engine on a network thatfacilitates search in support of the personal content locations of thepervasive network. (Note that it is within contemplation of thedisclosed architecture that in a robust implementation, web-based searchengines such as Bing™, for example, can be configured to support andperform pervasive search as described herein.)

In a first implementation, each personal content location has its ownsearch engine. For example, a first personal content location 202(similar to personal content location 108 of FIG. 1) has a first computenode 204, first personal content 206, and a first pervasive searchengine 208, a second personal content location 210 (similar to personalcontent location 108 of FIG. 1) has a second compute node 212, secondpersonal content 214, and a second pervasive search engine 216, and athird personal content location 218 (similar to personal contentlocation 108 of FIG. 1) has a third compute node 220, third personalcontent 222, and a third pervasive search engine 224. The pervasivesearch engines (208, 216, and 224) are shown in dotted lines to indicateas optional blocks for purposes of this overall description of thesystem 200.

As similarly described above in the head-to-head configuration of FIG.1, the query 120 issued by the content owner 110 (via program(s) of thefirst personal content location 202) to a web-based search engine 226 isprocessed at the web-based search engine 226 for web documents 228.

The query 120 is also passed back to the first pervasive search engine208 (since the content owner 110 issued the query 120) of the firstpersonal content location 202 for query processing (e.g., concurrentlywith the web-based search) on the pervasive network of content locations(202, 210, and 218) and corresponding compute nodes (204, 212, and 220).The first pervasive search engine 208 processes the query 120 against anindex (not shown) of the first personal content 206 provided by thefirst compute node 204 and returns zero, some, or all of the firstpersonal content 206 as results for presentation with the web-basedresults.

The first pervasive search engine 208 passes the query 120 to the firstcompute node 204, which forwards the query 120 to the compute node(s) ofany one or more other personal content locations, designated as part ofthe pervasive network for the content owner 110. Here, both the personalcontent locations (210 and 218) are part of the pervasive network.Accordingly, the second compute node 212 receives the query 120 andsends the query 120 to the second pervasive search engine 216, whichprocesses the query 120 against an index (not shown) of the secondpersonal content 214 to return zero, some, or all of the second personalcontent 214 as results 230 to the second compute node 212, which returnsthe results 230 back to the first compute node 204 and then the firstpervasive search engine 208 for presentation with the web-based results.

If the second personal content location 210 is “owned” (exercisescontrol over) by the content owner 110, results 230 returned to thefirst compute node 204 can be obtained from both shared content andprivate content of the second personal content 214. If the secondpersonal content location 210 is “owned” by a different content owner ofthe pervasive network, results 230 returned to the first compute node204 are obtained from only the shared content (as permitted) of thesecond personal content 214.

Similarly, the first compute node 204 passes the query 120 to the thirdcompute node 220. (This is indicated using the dotted and solid arrowsin both directions, thereby not communicating through the secondpersonal content location 210, but over a network or peer-to-peerconnection, although this may be performed as a “proxy” implementation.)The third compute node 220 receives the query 120 and sends the query tothe third pervasive search engine 224, which processes the query 120against an index (not shown) of the third personal content 222 to returnzero, some, or all of the third personal content 222 as results 232 tothe third compute node 220, which then returns the results 232 directly(e.g., peer-to-peer, wired/wireless network, etc.) back to the firstcompute node 204 (indicated by the dotted-solid arrow) and then thefirst pervasive search engine 208 for presentation with the web-basedresults.

As before if the third personal content location 218 is “owned” by thecontent owner 110, results 232 returned to the first compute node 204can be obtained from both shared content and private content of thethird personal content 222. If the third personal content location 218is “owned” by a different content owner of the pervasive network,results 232 returned to the first compute node 204 are obtained fromonly the shared content (as permitted) of the third personal content222.

Note that although showing the first compute node 204 connectingdirectly to the second compute node 212, which can be performed viapeer-to-peer (short range wireless (e.g., Bluetooth™) and wiredcommunications, the connection can also be accomplished through awired/wireless network. This applies as well to communications betweenthe first personal content location 202 and the third personal contentlocation 218.

In an alternative implementation, the first pervasive search engine 208of the first personal content location 202 can not only search its ownfirst personal content 206 but also the personal content of one or moreother personal content locations such as second personal content 214and/or third personal content 222. In this alternative implementation,the second index of the second compute node 212 may be served to thefirst compute node 204, and therefrom to the first pervasive searchengine 208 for query processing. The first pervasive search engine 208then requests the results, as derived from the second index, through thefirst compute node 204 and to the second compute node 212, whichrequested results are obtained from the second personal content 214. Theresults 230 are then handled as previously described based on if theowner 110 owns the second personal content location 210, or not. Thesame process follows for other personal content locations of thepervasive network.

In yet another alternative implementation, the search engine is hostedon the pervasive network (a pervasive network search engine) to handlethe pervasive network querying processing. In other words, the pervasivenetwork search engine does not need to reside at any of the personalcontent locations (202, 210, and 218). This implementation can apply tohome networks, for example, or other private networks, such asenterprise networks, etc.

Consider a pervasive network search engine 234 such as on a home networknode without personal content (although this is not a requirement). Thepervasive network search engine 234 can then receive the query 120 fromthe first compute node 204 and then process the query 120 against theindex generated from the first compute node 204 to return results fromthe first personal content 206 to the first compute node 204 (or retainthe results at the pervasive network search engine 234).

The first compute node 204 forwards the query 120 to the second computenode 212 and the second compute node 212 passes the query 120 to thepervasive network search engine 234, which then processes the query 120against the index of the second compute node 212. The results from thesecond personal content 214 are then returned to the first compute node204 (or retained at the pervasive network search engine 234). This cancontinue as well for the third personal content location 218, which maybe a cloud location (without a search engine). The pervasive networksearch engine 234 runs the query 120 against a cloud index generated bya cloud compute node (e.g., compute node 220) at the cloud personalcontent location (e.g., third personal content location 218). Theresults from the third personal content 222 are then returned to thefirst compute node 204 (or retained at the pervasive network searchengine 234).

The results stored at the pervasive network search engine 234 or at thefirst compute node 204 can now be further processed by the pervasivenetwork search engine 234 for aggregation and ranking with web documentresults and presentation to the content owner 110.

Alternatively still, the network search engine 234 can be given a listof pervasive network personal content locations (e.g., 202, 210, and218) to run the query 120 against the corresponding location indices.Thus, query passing is not via one compute node to another compute nodebut directly to the pervasive network search engine 234. The results canthen be passed back to the first personal content location 202 forpresentation processing by a browser in combination with web documentresults.

In yet another variation, the web-based search engine 226 receives thequery 120, the list of pervasive network personal content locations(202, 210, and 218) to be accessed, and forwards the query to thecorresponding personal content location search engines (208, 216, and218) and/or the pervasive network search engine 234 for processing.Essentially, any search engine of a personal content location can beutilized to process the query as long as the query issuer is known—thesource of the query is known so that the results are sent to the properquery originator. This offloads the query processing from the web-basedsearch engine 226 to other pervasive (or pervasive network) searchengines, although this need not be a requirement.

A personal content location in the cloud (e.g., the third personalcontent location 218) can be handled as with other personal contentlocations of the pervasive network, since the cloud personal contentlocation has a compute node (e.g., the third compute node 220), andoperates like other compute nodes of the pervasive network, andaccording to any of the previously described alternatives andvariations.

For example, where the query 120 is issued from the first personalcontent location 202 and the cloud personal content location (e.g., thethird personal content location 218) lacks a search engine, the cloudindex (e.g., the index of the third personal content location 218)generated by the cloud compute node (e.g., the third compute node 220)can be sent to the first personal content location 202 for processing bythe first pervasive search engine 208. The first pervasive search engine208 can then request the results from the cloud personal content (e.g.,third personal content 222) via the first compute node 204 communicatingto the cloud compute node (e.g., the third compute node 220), and thecloud compute node returns the results (e.g., results 232) to the firstcompute node 204.

Alternatively, the cloud index stays at the cloud personal contentlocation and the first pervasive search engine 208 runs the searchprocess over the network to the cloud location index and the results arereturned back through the cloud compute node to the first compute node204.

Still alternatively, the cloud index stays at the cloud personal contentlocation and the first compute node 204 sends the query 120 to the cloudcompute node, which then sends the query 120 to the cloud search engine(e.g., the third pervasive search engine 224) to process the query 120against the cloud index and return results from the cloud personalcontent to the cloud compute node and therefrom to the first computenode 204 and the first pervasive search engine 208 for aggregation,ranking, and presentation.

FIG. 3 illustrates an alternative pervasive network system 300 where apervasive network compute node 302 performs compute node operations forone or more personal content locations 304. For example, the privatenetwork compute node 302 (similar to compute node 104 of FIG. 1)generates a first index 306, a second index 308, and a third index 310for the corresponding personal content (206, 214, and 222) of therespective personal content locations (202, 210, and 218) of FIG. 2.Although showing the indexing of a subset of the personal contentlocations 304, alternatively, the pervasive network compute node 302 canbe designed to handle all compute node operations for all of thepersonal content locations 304.

In operation, as before, the originator (content owner) of the query 120indicates the access rights to the shared content of the personalcontent (e.g., 214) of any other personal content location (e.g., 210and 218) via the index 306. The pervasive network compute node 302processes the index 306 and handles access to the shared and privatecontent of the personal content locations (210 and 218). Results arethen passed back through the pervasive network compute node 302 to thefirst personal content location 202. Alternatively, the results can bepassed over the network between the search engines (e.g., secondpervasive search engine 216 to the first pervasive search engine 208),or by other application means. Once the web-based and pervasive networkresults are received back at the first personal content location 202,results processing is performed as before by the first pervasive searchengine 208 for aggregation, ranking, and presentation of both theweb-based results and pervasive network results.

The pervasive network compute node 302 can be located on a separatenetwork machine such as a server of a home network, or at one of thepersonal content locations to handle compute node operations for one ormore of the other personal content locations 304.

The following description describes pervasive search alternatively interms of devices rather than personal content locations. However, thisis not to be construed as limiting in anyway.

FIG. 4 illustrates a system 400 in accordance with the disclosedarchitecture. The system 400 can include an indexer component 402 of adevice 404 of a content owner 406 that generates an index 408 thatresides on the device 404 (a “local” index) of personal content 410 ofthe device 404 for processing of a query 412 received by a pervasivesearch engine 414 of the device 404.

A serve component 416 (of the device 404) sends the query 412 to aremote device 418 of a shared content owner 420 for processing against ashared content index 422 of shared personal content 424. The remotedevice 418 enables access by the device 404 to the shared personalcontent 424 of the remote device 418 as indexed according to the sharedcontent index 422. The shared personal content 424 of the remote device418 is accessible by the device 404 (the content owner 406) based on apermission (access credentials) associated with the content owner 406.The serve component 416 receives shared content results 426 from theremote device 418 based on processing of the query 412 against theshared content index 422 (by a pervasive search engine of the remotedevice 418) and personal content results 428 of the device 404 based onprocessing of the query 412 against the index 408 by the pervasivesearch engine 414.

The personal content 410 of the content owner 406 is personal content ofthe content owner 406, and the shared personal content 424 of the sharedcontent owner 420 is personal content of the shared content owner 420.The personal content 410 of the content owner 406 is held private from apublic user and the shared personal content 424 of the shared contentowner 420 is enabled to be accessed by the content owner 406.

The index 408 can be made viewable to a public user to indicate to thepublic user that the owner of the index may have a certain document typeor content but then prohibit access to obtain the document. The documentis only accessible after paying some fee, for example.

The index 408 can be distributed on one or more other devices (e.g., theremote device 418). The index 408 can be generated in realtime on thedevice 404 of the content owner 406.

The shared content owner 420 can enable the shared content index 422 tobecome a public index that is searchable by a public user based onaccess criteria. As before with personal content locations, the sharedpersonal content 424 accessed by the public user can be based oncriteria of at least one of proximity of the public user issuing thequery to the remote device 418, degree of separation between the sharedcontent owner 420 and the public user, quality measure and relevance ofthe shared personal content 424 of the shared content owner 420, orconfidence measure of the shared content owner 420.

The remote device 418 can be a sensor system that generates realtimesensor data that is indexed in realtime to generate a realtime sensorindex (e.g., the shared content index 422). The sensor system comprisesa sensor system serve component (similar in capability to the servecomponent 416) that serves the realtime sensor index for search usingthe query 412 received by the pervasive search engine 414.

Although not shown here, but in later figures, the remote device 418 cancomprise a remote indexer component and a remote serve component as partof a remote compute node. The remote indexer component generates theshared content index 422 and the remote serve component serves theshared content index 422 to a remote search engine (not shown, butsimilar to pervasive search engine 414) of the remote device 418 thatprocesses the query 412. The remote serve component receives zero, some,or all of shared personal content of the shared content 424 as theshared content results 426 from the remote search engine and returns theshared content results 426 to the serve component 416 of the device 404.

The indexer component 402 and serve component 416 are part of a computenode that processes the query 412 on the device 404. The compute nodeforwards the query 412 to other compute nodes of other devices (e.g.,the remote device 418) and, aggregates and ranks retrieved personalcontent results (e.g., shared personal content results 426) from theother compute nodes with the personal content results 428 of the device404.

The serve component 416 serves the index 408 for processing of the query412 on the device 404, and zero, some, or all personal content of thepersonal content 410 of the content owner 406 (as the content results428) and zero, some, or all shared personal content of the personalcontent 424 (as the shared content results 426) of the remote device 418are presented, optionally, with web search results 430 on the device404. The web results are optional in that the query 412 can be limitedto devices on an enterprise or intranet, in which case, no web resultsare desired.

The content owner 406 can be a human user or a non-human user such as atraffic camera and the shared content owner 420 can be a human user ornon-human user such as a weather camera, etc.

The indexer component 402 and serve component 416 are shown internal tothe device 404; however, in one implementation, these components can beapplications that run external to the device 404, as previouslyillustrated in FIG. 3 for example.

Although not shown, the disclosed architecture can provide a privacycomponent that enables the user to opt in or out of exposing personalcontent, and other information. The privacy component enables theauthorized and secure handling of user information.

In a purely home or other private network implementation, for example,it can be the case that one of the private network devices, a designatedprivate device (also referred to as a “local network device”, denoted as“local” to distinguish from “other” network devices), serves as thedesignated search engine and designated compute node for one or more ofthe other private network devices (also referred to as “other networkdevices”). The designated private network device is given access to thepersonal content of the other private network devices and the designatedcompute node generates a private network index for all accessible sharedpersonal content of the other private network devices, the privatecontent of the other private network devices as well as the privatecontent of the designated private device, since these devices are allmanaged and controlled by the same owner of the private network. Thus, aquery presented to any of the private network devices is then routed tothe designated private device and processed against the private networkindex to return private content and/or shared personal content of thedesignated private device and other private network devices.

FIG. 5 illustrates a system 500 that serves web and shared documents assearch results. In this example system 500, two user devices are shownthat permit access by a first user (User1) to their shared personaldocuments. (Note that this example only shows the search against theshared personal documents of two other users (a second user (User2) anda third user (User3), and not the first user actually making the query;however, during typical operation, the search can also be processedagainst the private and shared documents of the first user, should thefirst user enable that to be performed.)

For example, the second user (User2) 502 permits access to second usershared personal documents 504 of a second user personal storage 506,which also stores access-prohibited private documents 508 (onlyaccessible by the second user). Similarly, the third user (User3) 510permits access to third user shared personal documents 512 of a thirduser personal storage 514, which also stores access-prohibited privatedocuments 516 (only accessible by the third user).

The devices of each user (502 and 510) comprise a compute node (CNx) forcreating a personal content index and serving the personal content indexto a web-based search engine. For example, the device of the second user502 includes a second compute node (CN2) 518, and the device of thethird user 510 comprises a third compute node (CN3) 520.

The indices produced by the compute nodes (518 and 520) can be handledin several different ways. For example, in order to provide optimumperformance, the indices are processed locally on the devices by devicepervasive search engines and the results are passed directly into thebrowser application to be presented with web results, rather than beingpassed to the web-based search engine for presentation back to the localdevice with the web results.

Alternatively, one or more of the indices can be uploaded to a dedicatedpervasive network search engine (e.g., network search engine 234 of FIG.2) (a search engine other than the web-based search engine and thedevice pervasive search engines) for processing of personal and sharedpersonal document identification and retrieval based on a received User1query 526. The query 526 is shown as being applied not only to a searchengine web index 528, but also to a shared indices table 530. The sharedindices table 530 stores the index information for the indexes (522 and524) of the second and third users (502 and 510).

In yet another implementation, the indices (522 and 524) can be uploadedto the web-based search engine for query processing and return of theweb results and shared personal results to the first user. In thisimplementation, the web search engine analyzes the indices forpermissions, tags, and identification information that indicate thespecific personal content to be returned and presented in the first userbrowser.

In this example, the web search engine can then request the sharedresult content from the devices (502 and 510), and rank the sharedresult content to select the top shared result content to present in thebrowser of the first user. In still another alternative to this example,the web search engine can send information to the local devices of theuser (502 and 510) that specifies the content to be extracted forpresentation, based on the web search engine processing of the indices(522 and 524).

These are just several examples of the protocols that can be employed tohandle query processing when using multiple search engines (pervasiveand web-based) and public/private and shared personal content.

In this example, the pervasive search engine of the device (not shown)of the first user receives the query 526 and processes the query 526 inview of index information stored in the shared indices table 530 (whichidentifies the shared indexes (522 and 524). The query 526 is processedby the device of the first user by at least forwarding the query 526 forprocessing on each of the devices of the second and third users (502 and510). The pervasive search engines (not shown) of the shared devices ofthe second and third users (502 and 510) each process the query 526, andthe shared results 534 (shown as a single block of results, but actuallycomprise separate sets of results from the devices of each of the secondand third users (502 and 510)) are returned.

Similarly, the web search engine (not shown) processes the query 526using the search engine web index 528 and web documents 536 to returnweb results 538. The shared personal results 534 and web results 538 areaggregated and ranked using an aggregation and ranking component 540,and output to the first user as query results 542. The aggregation andranking component 540 can be associated with the web search enginesystem such that the first user device sends the shared results to theweb search engine for aggregation and ranking with the web results 538,and ultimate presentation.

The query results 542 presented to the querying user comprise zero, one,or more shared personal documents 544 from the second user sharedpersonal documents 504, zero, one, or more shared personal documents 546from the third user shared personal documents 512, and/or zero, one, ormore web documents 548 from the web documents 536.

The ranking of pervasive search results involves determining thesignificance (or relevance) of the retrieved piece of shared and/orstored content on personal devices for a given user query depending onuser preferences and the query signal/relevance. For example, consider auser query, “summer garden 2013”. If the system computes or has computedthat the user is an avid gardener and photographer, and has a hugecollection of garden photographs taken in summer 2013, those retrievedphotographs for the query can be ranked higher in comparison to textdocuments that have “summer”, “garden”, and “2013” mentioned therein, oreven web results for “summer garden 2013”, much of which will beirrelevant to the user due to the generic and trite (albeit personal)nature of the query. Accordingly, the ranking capability of theaggregation and ranking component 540 can rank shared personal contentresults in view of the associated significance of the shared personalcontent results to the user and the user query.

The aggregation and ranking process can be performed separately on theshared personal results 534 and on the web results 538, such that eachset of results is ranked independently of the other. In this case, theshared results can be presented as a single annotated and rankedgrouping in the browser (or other application) or separate annotatedranked sets of each of the users (502 and 510) shared results groups, asindicated herein below.

In an alternative implementation, all of the shared results 534 and webresults 538 are ranked together, and then separated in the userinterface (UI) for user identification as to which results are theranked shared personal results, and which are the ranked web results.

Still further, alternatively, the entire set of shared and web resultscan be presented as a single set of results with the shared resultsannotated with some kind of identifier that identifies the result as ashared results of a specific pervasive network user. Additionally, asindicated herein, the aggregation and ranking can also include theprivate documents and/or shared personal documents of the first user(the querying user), as described herein below.

The pervasive search architecture enables powerful search scenariosinvolving personal events. For example, the user can query for personalevent-related content on personal devices using queries such as “myHawaii vacation 2012”, “New Year's 2013”, “Father's day”, which are farmore relevant for personal content available on personal storage devicesthan online content publically available on the web.

In this example system 500, the web search engine (not shown, butassociated with the web index 528 and web results 538) can comprisehardware and applications that facilitate storage and processing ofquery 526, access and retrieval of shared personal documents from thesecond and third devices of the corresponding users (502 and 510), theshared results 534, the search engine web index 528 and web results 538,the aggregation and ranking component 540 for aggregating and rankingthe shared results 534 and web results 538, and the presentation of thequery results 542 on the first user device.

FIG. 6 illustrates an indexer component 600 (similar to indexercomponent 102) of a pervasive network compute node that generates anindex of shared documents of a user device. In this particular example,the indexer component 600 (e.g., of a third user of three users) takesdocument tags and generates an inverted index for the documents. It isto be understood, however, that this is only one type of indexingtechnology that can be employed. For example, alternatively, otherindexing technologies such as suffix tree, n-gram index, document-termindex, and so on, can be employed. The document views ascertain whatdocuments in the inverted indexes are accessible for a given user. Thedocument or content owner decides the users who can query and view thedocuments by way of permissions (e.g., account, folder, file, etc.).

Each document (a document 602) can be processed for tags 604 (e.g.,words) that relate to the given document. Moreover, multiple differentdocuments may have the same tags. Accordingly, a single tag, tag 606,may be related to many different documents 608 having the same tag. Aninverted index 610 is then created that maps the tags (e.g., tag 606) toone or more of the documents 612 in the shared documents of given userdevices; a first user device (the querying user) and a second userdevice (a sharing user).

Once generated, the inverted index 610 is then used (e.g., by the localsearch engine) for processing a query submitted by the first user toreturn document views of personal documents, for example, a first userdocument view 614 of documents 616 on the third user device that areaccessible by the first user and a second user document view 618 ofdocuments 620 on the third user device that are accessible by the seconduser. As previously indicated, the document views ascertain whatdocuments in the inverted indexes are accessible for a given user. Thus,the querying user is presented with the results 622, which can includenot only the pervasive network document results, but also the webdocument results (not shown).

FIG. 7 illustrates a serve system 700 of a compute node that serves theindex and returned relevant personal documents based on the query 412. Aserve component 702 (similar to the serve component 118) for the thirduser (User3) identifies the documents accessible to the first userissuing the query 412. The serve system 700 utilizes the serve component702 to interface to the pervasive search engine (of a given device) suchthat the user query 412 of the first user (User1), as processed againstthe inverted index 610 (of User3) of tags 704 that match the query 412,returns only those documents identified by the first user document view614, as represented by the served documents 706 to the first user.

FIG. 8 illustrates a distributed indexing system 800 for compute nodes.Depicted are three user devices (a first user device 802, a second userdevice 804, and a third user device 806) of many different possibledevices 808 such as personal user devices (e.g., tablet computer,digital cameras, video cameras, audio devices, smartphone, portablecomputer, etc.) and non-personal user devices (e.g., autonomous sensorsystems, traffic camera, street camera, weather sensors, etc.) that cancommunicate using any one or more technologies such as wired (e.g.,Ethernet™), wireless (e.g., Ethernet™), and short range wireless (e.g.,Bluetooth™), for example.

The first user device 802 comprises a first compute node 810 forcreating a personal index and serving the index to a pervasive searchengine 811 (also denoted PSE1). The first compute node 810 comprises afirst indexer component 812 that creates a first personal index 814 ofshared documents 816 of a first user personal storage 818, which alsoincludes private documents 820 that are restricted from unauthorizedexternal access by other users and/or systems. The first compute node810 also comprises a first index serve component 822 that serves thefirst personal index 814 to the pervasive search engine 811.

Similarly, the second user device 804 comprises a second compute node824 for creating a personal index and serving the index to a pervasivesearch engine 825 (also denoted PSE2). The second compute node 824comprises a second indexer component 826 that creates a second personalindex 828 of shared documents 830 of a second user personal storage 832,which also includes private documents 834 that are restricted fromunauthorized external access by other users and/or systems. The secondcompute node 824 also comprises a second index serve component 836 thatserves the second personal index 828 to the pervasive search engine 825.

The third user device 806 comprises a third compute node 838 forcreating a personal index and serving the index to a pervasive searchengine 839 (also denoted PSE3). The third compute node 838 comprises athird indexer component 840 that creates a third personal index 842 ofshared documents 844 of a third user personal storage 846, which alsoincludes private documents 848 that are restricted from unauthorizedexternal access by other users and/or systems. The third compute node838 also comprises a third index serve component 850 that serves thethird personal index 842 to the pervasive search engine 839.

In each device case, when the pervasive search engine processes thequery generated by the first user (or possibly received by the firstuser device), for example, and the first user is permitted access to theshared documents (830 and 844) of the second and third devices (804 and806), the second and third personal indexes (828 and 842) stored locallyare processed to retrieve the related shared personal documents (of theshared documents 830 and 844) shared from the corresponding second andthird devices (804 and 806), and present the related shared personaldocument results to the user of the first user device 802 (and possiblyalong with web-based results from the web search engine).

The personal indexes (814, 828, and 842) can be distributed across otheruser devices. For example, the first personal index 814 can be cloned onone or more other user devices, such as on the second user device 804.Similarly, the first personal index 814 and second personal index 828can each be cloned as indexes 852 on one or more other user devices,such as on the third user device 806.

Thus, it is to be appreciated that distributing indexes across one ormore other devices provides higher availability of the personaldocuments for search should indexing and/or application failure occur ona device. The index serve component of each device can be configured topass the cloned index(es) to other devices and/or to the search engine,as desired.

FIG. 9 illustrates an index interface system 900 that facilitatesupdating and accessing indexes for various content locations. Forexample, an index 904 of personal shared documents for the querying usercan exist on the querying user device 902, a cloud index 906 forpersonal shared documents for the querying user stored in the cloud(e.g., a personal network location, a personal network location such asa social network, etc.), an index 908 for personal shared documents of asecond pervasive network user (User2), an index 910 for personal shareddocuments of a third pervasive network user (User3), as well as forother querying user indexes 912 of other querying user devices, and soon. The index 904 stored on the user device 902 can be a single indexthat identifies the other indexes of other personal devices of thequerying user. Moreover, the index 904 can be a single index created bymerging the individual indexes of the other user personal devices. Theindex interface 914 then facilitates the update of the index 904according to updates made individually by the other user personaldevices to their individual index. Thus, when the index 904 is processedfor a query on the user device 902, the results can be obtained directlyfrom (pulled) each of the other user personal devices without runningthe query against the indexes (using pervasive search engines) of theother user personal devices.

Thus, an index interface 914 provides the link (associated with thequerying user ID of the machine/device being used) to all other externaland personal indexes of the querying user, as well as sharing users. Inother words, the index interface 914 tracks the other nodes (devices,machines) associated with the user and accessible by the user as ownedby the user and as authorized to access by shared content owners. Thus,the index interface 914 of the querying user device 902 provides thecapability to access and update the various external indexes as well asreceive updates from the various external indexes to the index 904.

The querying user can access any querying user index of any queryinguser device, such as on a home network or office computers/devices ofthe querying user as content owner of all these devices, as well as theshared index from any device of the querying user. Moreover, the indexinterface 914 enables the querying user to access the index of private(not shared) content of the device.

FIG. 10 illustrates an exemplary user interface (UI) 1000 for pervasivesearch that enables personal data to be searched and returned for aquery. In this particular example, the UI 1000 (e.g., of a tablet)comprises a query box 1002 in which a first user enters a query (e.g.,query 112, query 226, etc.) for processing. The web results andpersonalized content results are returned for presentation to the firstuser in a search engine results page (SERP) 1004. In this presentation,the left side of the SERP 1004 shows the ranked web results 1006, andthe right side of the SERP 1004 shows the pervasive results 1008 ofpersonalized content. The personalized content of the pervasive results1008 can include user personal device results 1010 (e.g., rankedleft-to-right) of one or more user devices, second user pervasivenetwork results 1012 (e.g., ranked left-to-right) from a second user ofthe pervasive network of shared personal content, and third userpervasive network results 1014 (e.g., ranked left-to-right) from a thirduser of the pervasive network of shared personal content.

The second and third users have allowed access to some or all of theirpersonal content via the private indexes of the second and third userscreated and stored for use based on a query of the first user.

FIG. 11 illustrates an exemplary user interface 1100 for pervasivesearch that enables personal data to be searched and returned for aquery. In this particular example, the UI 1100 (e.g., of a tablet)comprises the query box 1002 in which a first user enters a query forprocessing. The web results and personalized content results arereturned for presentation to the first user in the SERP 1004. In thispresentation, the SERP 1004 is presented on the left side of the UI 1100and shows the ranked web results 1006 in the SERP 1004 and the pervasiveresults 1008 of personalized content. As before, the pervasive resultscan include user personal device results 1010 of personal content of oneor more user devices, second user results 1012 of personal content froma second user of the pervasive network of shared personal content, andthird user results 1014 of personal content from a third user of thepervasive network of shared personal content, as well as content fromother sharing users of the pervasive network.

The second and third users have authorized (enabled permission) by firstuser to access to some or all of their device results, and thus, toallow access their designated personal content (e.g., local and/orcloud) via the private indexes of the second and third users created andstored for search by the first user. The right side of the UI 1100 canshow a tile area 1102 of desktop tiles 1104 as enabled for userinteraction with device programs and/or data.

FIG. 12 illustrates a more detailed example of the pervasive results1200 presented in the SERP 1004 of the user interface. Personaldocuments of the first user and of the other users include but are notlimited to, photographs, images, videos, text documents such as receiptsand word documents, spreadsheets, audio files, etc. These documents mayreside on personal devices that index the local documents and personaldocuments stored in a network (e.g., the “cloud”) account or location.

In this particular example, the pervasive results 1200 are returned forpresentation to the first user in the SERP 1004. In this presentation,the first user ranked results 1202 of personalized content of theresults 1010 for the first user (the querying user), as obtained fromone or more devices of the first user and/or a cloud location, caninclude four instances of ranked results (e.g., ranked left-to-right ashighest to lowest of the four instances).

For example, if the query is “garden”, the user1 index (stored at thesearch engine) can be searched for documents indexed by the term“garden” and then returned as part of the pervasive result in the SERP1004. In other words, a first result (RESLT1 _(PD1)) of the first user(User1) ranked results 1202 can be a document image of a garden withtags of “veggie, summer, raised bed, August, 2012”. (Note, this resultcan be from a first device of the first user, as indicated by “PD1”(Personal Device-1).) Similarly, a second result (RESLT2 _(PD2)) of thefirst user (User1) ranked results 1202 can be a document image of a bowlof cherries associated with tags of “cherries, harvest, October, 2011”.(Note, this result can be from a second device of the first user, asindicated by “PD2” (Personal Device-2).) A third result (RESLT3 _(PD1))of the first user (User1) ranked results 1202 can be a document image ofa receipt with tags of “nursery, receipt, finance, 2013”, and a fourthresult (RESLT4 _(PD1)) of the first user (User1) ranked results 1202 canbe a document icon of a spreadsheet associated with tags of “sowing,timeline, nursery, excel”.

Similar results can then be returned from the sharing users (User2 andUser3) of the pervasive network. For example, a first result (RESLT1_(U2)) of the second user (User2) ranked results 1204 can be a documentimage of raspberries with associated tags of “raspberries, fall, 2011”,a second result (RESLT2 _(U2)) of the second user (User2) ranked results1204 can be another document image of tomatoes with associated tags of“cherry tomato, summer, 2013”, and so on, for other personal documentcontent. The third user ranked results 1206 returned for the third user(User3) can include a first result (RESLT1 _(U3)) having a documentimage of tomatoes with associated tags of “roma tomato, fall, 2012”, asecond result (RESLT2 _(U3)) as a word processing document icon withassociated tags of “growing romas, HowTo, doc”, and so on, for otherpersonal document content.

Included herein is a set of flow charts representative of exemplarymethodologies for performing novel aspects of the disclosedarchitecture. While, for purposes of simplicity of explanation, the oneor more methodologies shown herein, for example, in the form of a flowchart or flow diagram, are shown and described as a series of acts, itis to be understood and appreciated that the methodologies are notlimited by the order of acts, as some acts may, in accordance therewith,occur in a different order and/or concurrently with other acts from thatshown and described herein. For example, those skilled in the art willunderstand and appreciate that a methodology could alternatively berepresented as a series of interrelated states or events, such as in astate diagram. Moreover, not all acts illustrated in a methodology maybe required for a novel implementation.

FIG. 13 illustrates a method in accordance with the disclosedarchitecture. At 1300, a content index of personal content of a personalcontent location of a content owner is generated and a remote index ofremote personal content on a remote personal content location of aremote content owner is generated. At 1302, the content index and theremote index are served for processing of a query issued by the contentowner. At 1304, search results of relevant personal content are returnedfrom the personal content location and relevant shared personal contentfrom the remote personal content location are returned based onprocessing of the query on the content index and the remote index.

The method can further comprise processing the query against the contentindex and the remote index, and against a web index, and returning webresults along with the relevant personal content and the relevant sharedpersonal content for presentation to the content owner.

The method can further comprise processing the query at the personalcontent location of the content owner as against the content index, andprocessing the query on the remote personal content location of theremote content owner as against the remote index.

The method can further comprise merging the content index and the remotecontent index to create a merged index, and storing the merged index ina network storage location for access and processing by a search engineto return relevant personal content and relevant shared personal contentas search results.

The method can further comprise forwarding the query from the remotepersonal content location to another remote personal content location,processing the query against another remote index of the another remotepersonal content location, and returning relevant personal content fromthe another remote personal content location to the remote personalcontent location. The method can further comprise cloning the contentindex and remote index at one or more other personal content locations.

FIG. 14 illustrates an alternative method in accordance with thedisclosed architecture. The method can be embodied on acomputer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executableinstructions that when executed by a microprocessor, cause themicroprocessor to perform one or more of the following acts. At 1400, acontent index of personal content is generated at a personal contentlocation of a content owner. At 1402, authorized access to sharedpersonal content of a remote personal content location of a sharedcontent owner is received. The shared personal content is indexedaccording to a shared content index. At 1404, a query issued by thecontent owner is processed against the content index and the sharedcontent index. At 1406, relevant personal content results of thepersonal content location and relevant shared personal content resultsfrom the remote personal content location are received based onprocessing of the query. At 1408, the relevant personal content resultsand relevant shared personal content results are ranked based on userpreferences and personal content relevance. At 1410, the ranked personalcontent results and ranked relevant shared personal content results arepresented with web-based results to the content owner.

The method can further comprise receiving the relevant shared personalcontent results from the remote personal content location based on atleast one of proximity of the personal content location to the remotepersonal content location, quality measure of the relevant sharedpersonal content of the remote personal content location, relevance ofthe shared personal content of the remote personal content location orconfidence measure of the shared content owner.

The method can further comprise indexing realtime data of the remotepersonal content location and serving the realtime data index to thequery. The method can further comprise distributing and caching thecontent index and the shared personal content index among multiplepersonal content locations.

The method can further comprise sending the query from the personalcontent location directly to the remote personal content location andother accessible remote personal content locations, processing the queryat each of the remote personal content location and the other accessibleremote personal content locations, and receiving back at the personalcontent location relevant content results from any one or more of theremote personal content location and the other accessible remotepersonal content locations.

The following alternative methods are presented in terms of devicesrather than personal content locations.

FIG. 15 illustrates a method in accordance with the disclosedarchitecture. At 1500, a private index of private content of a localdevice of a content owner is generated and a shared index of sharedcontent on a remote device of a shared content owner is generated. Theprivate index can be an index of private user documents accessibly onlyby the user. The private index is then processed to return only privaterelevant content to the user of the local device and no other user inthe pervasive network. At 1502, the private index and the shared indexare served (made accessible) for processing of a query from the contentowner. At 1504, search results of relevant private content from thelocal device of the content owner and relevant shared content from theremote device of the shared content owner are returned based onprocessing of the query on the private index and the shared index.

The method can further comprise processing the query against the privateindex and the shared index, and against a web index, and returning webresults along with the relevant private content and the relevant sharedcontent for presentation to the content owner. The method can furthercomprise processing the query on the local device of the content ownerand against the private index, and processing the query on the remotedevice of the shared content owner and against the shared index. Themethod can further comprise merging the private index and the sharedindex to create a merged index, and storing the merged index in anetwork storage location for access and processing by a search engine toreturn the search results. In this way, the merged indexed is highlyavailable for access from any user device.

The method can further comprise forwarding the query from the remotedevice of the shared content owner to another remote device (not thelocal device) of another shared content owner, processing the queryagainst another shared index of the another remote device, and returningrelevant content from the another remote device to the remote device ofthe shared content owner. The method can further comprise cloning theprivate index and shared index on other pervasive network devices.

FIG. 16 illustrates an alternative method in accordance with thedisclosed architecture. A computer-readable storage medium comprisescomputer-executable instructions that when executed by a microprocessor,cause the microprocessor to perform the following acts. At 1600, a localindex of content on a local device of a content owner is generated. At1602, authorized access is received to shared content of a remote deviceof a shared content owner, the shared content indexed according to ashared index. At 1604, a query is processed against the local index andthe shared index. At 1606, relevant content results of the local deviceand relevant shared content results from the remote device of the sharedcontent owner are received based on processing of the query. At 1608,the relevant content results from the local device and relevant sharedcontent results from the remote device of the shared content owner areranked based on user preferences and content relevance. At 1610, theranked relevant content results and ranked relevant shared contentresults are presented with web-based results on the local device of thecontent owner.

The computer-readable storage medium can further comprise instructionsfor receiving the relevant shared content results from the remote devicebased on at least one of proximity of the local device to the remotedevice, quality measure of the relevant shared content of the remotedevice, relevance of the share content of the remote device orconfidence measure of the shared content owner. The computer-readablestorage medium can further comprise instructions for indexing realtimedata of the remote device and serving the realtime data index to anincoming query. The computer-readable storage medium can furthercomprise instructions for distributing and caching the local index andthe shared index among multiple devices. The computer-readable storagemedium can further comprise instructions for sending the query from thelocal device directly to the remote device and other accessible remotedevices, processing the query on each of the remote device and the otheraccessible remote devices, and receiving back at the local devicerelevant content results from any one or more of the remote device andthe other accessible remote devices.

As used in this application, the terms “component” and “system” areintended to refer to a computer-related entity, either hardware, acombination of software and tangible hardware, software, or software inexecution. For example, a component can be, but is not limited to,tangible components such as a microprocessor, chip memory, mass storagedevices (e.g., optical drives, solid state drives, and/or magneticstorage media drives), and computers, and software components such as aprocess running on a microprocessor, an object, an executable, a datastructure (stored in a volatile or a non-volatile storage medium), amodule, a thread of execution, and/or a program.

By way of illustration, both an application running on a server and theserver can be a component. One or more components can reside within aprocess and/or thread of execution, and a component can be localized onone computer and/or distributed between two or more computers. The word“exemplary” may be used herein to mean serving as an example, instance,or illustration. Any aspect or design described herein as “exemplary” isnot necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over otheraspects or designs.

Referring now to FIG. 17, there is illustrated a block diagram of acomputing system 1700 that executes pervasive search computing inaccordance with the disclosed architecture. However, it is appreciatedthat the some or all aspects of the disclosed methods and/or systems canbe implemented as a system-on-a-chip, where analog, digital, mixedsignals, and other functions are fabricated on a single chip substrate.

In order to provide additional context for various aspects thereof, FIG.17 and the following description are intended to provide a brief,general description of the suitable computing system 1700 in which thevarious aspects can be implemented. While the description above is inthe general context of computer-executable instructions that can run onone or more computers, those skilled in the art will recognize that anovel embodiment also can be implemented in combination with otherprogram modules and/or as a combination of hardware and software.

The computing system 1700 for implementing various aspects includes thecomputer 1702 having microprocessing unit(s) 1704 (also referred to asmicroprocessor(s) and processor(s)), a computer-readable storage mediumsuch as a system memory 1706 (computer readable storage medium/mediaalso include magnetic disks, optical disks, solid state drives, externalmemory systems, and flash memory drives), and a system bus 1708. Themicroprocessing unit(s) 1704 can be any of various commerciallyavailable microprocessors such as single-processor, multi-processor,single-core units and multi-core units of processing and/or storagecircuits. Moreover, those skilled in the art will appreciate that thenovel system and methods can be practiced with other computer systemconfigurations, including minicomputers, mainframe computers, as well aspersonal computers (e.g., desktop, laptop, tablet PC, etc.), hand-heldcomputing devices, microprocessor-based or programmable consumerelectronics, and the like, each of which can be operatively coupled toone or more associated devices.

The computer 1702 can be one of several computers employed in adatacenter and/or computing resources (hardware and/or software) insupport of cloud computing services for portable and/or mobile computingsystems such as wireless communications devices, cellular telephones,and other mobile-capable devices. Cloud computing services, include, butare not limited to, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service,software as a service, storage as a service, desktop as a service, dataas a service, security as a service, and APIs (application programinterfaces) as a service, for example.

The system memory 1706 can include computer-readable storage (physicalstorage) medium such as a volatile (VOL) memory 1710 (e.g., randomaccess memory (RAM)) and a non-volatile memory (NON-VOL) 1712 (e.g.,ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, etc.). A basic input/output system (BIOS) can bestored in the non-volatile memory 1712, and includes the basic routinesthat facilitate the communication of data and signals between componentswithin the computer 1702, such as during startup. The volatile memory1710 can also include a high-speed RAM such as static RAM for cachingdata.

The system bus 1708 provides an interface for system componentsincluding, but not limited to, the system memory 1706 to themicroprocessing unit(s) 1704. The system bus 1708 can be any of severaltypes of bus structure that can further interconnect to a memory bus(with or without a memory controller), and a peripheral bus (e.g., PCI,PCIe, AGP, LPC, etc.), using any of a variety of commercially availablebus architectures.

The computer 1702 further includes machine readable storage subsystem(s)1714 and storage interface(s) 1716 for interfacing the storagesubsystem(s) 1714 to the system bus 1708 and other desired computercomponents and circuits. The storage subsystem(s) 1714 (physical storagemedia) can include one or more of a hard disk drive (HDD), a magneticfloppy disk drive (FDD), solid state drive (SSD), flash drives, and/oroptical disk storage drive (e.g., a CD-ROM drive DVD drive), forexample. The storage interface(s) 1716 can include interfacetechnologies such as EIDE, ATA, SATA, and IEEE 1394, for example.

One or more programs and data can be stored in the memory subsystem1706, a machine readable and removable memory subsystem 1718 (e.g.,flash drive form factor technology), and/or the storage subsystem(s)1714 (e.g., optical, magnetic, solid state), including an operatingsystem 1720, one or more application programs 1722, other programmodules 1724, and program data 1726.

The operating system 1720, one or more application programs 1722, otherprogram modules 1724, and/or program data 1726 can include items andcomponents of the system 100 of FIG. 1, items and components of thesystem 200 of FIG. 2, items and components of the system 300 of FIG. 3,items and components of the system 400 of FIG. 4, items and componentsof the indexer component 600 of FIG. 6, items and components of theindex serve system 700 of FIG. 7, items and components of the system 800of FIG. 8, items and components of the index interface 900 of FIG. 9,items and components of the user interface 1000 of FIG. 10, items andcomponents of the user interface 1100 of FIG. 11, the pervasive results1200 of FIG. 12, and the methods represented by the flowcharts of FIGS.13-16, for example.

Generally, programs include routines, methods, data structures, othersoftware components, etc., that perform particular tasks, functions, orimplement particular abstract data types. All or portions of theoperating system 1720, applications 1722, modules 1724, and/or data 1726can also be cached in memory such as the volatile memory 1710 and/ornon-volatile memory, for example. It is to be appreciated that thedisclosed architecture can be implemented with various commerciallyavailable operating systems or combinations of operating systems (e.g.,as virtual machines).

The storage subsystem(s) 1714 and memory subsystems (1706 and 1718)serve as computer readable media for volatile and non-volatile storageof data, data structures, computer-executable instructions, and so on.Such instructions, when executed by a computer or other machine, cancause the computer or other machine to perform one or more acts of amethod. Computer-executable instructions comprise, for example,instructions and data which cause a general purpose computer, specialpurpose computer, or special purpose microprocessor device(s) to performa certain function or group of functions. The computer executableinstructions may be, for example, binaries, intermediate formatinstructions such as assembly language, or even source code. Theinstructions to perform the acts can be stored on one medium, or couldbe stored across multiple media, so that the instructions appearcollectively on the one or more computer-readable storage medium/media,regardless of whether all of the instructions are on the same media.

Computer readable storage media (medium) exclude (excludes) propagatedsignals per se, can be accessed by the computer 1702, and includevolatile and non-volatile internal and/or external media that isremovable and/or non-removable. For the computer 1702, the various typesof storage media accommodate the storage of data in any suitable digitalformat. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that othertypes of computer readable medium can be employed such as zip drives,solid state drives, magnetic tape, flash memory cards, flash drives,cartridges, and the like, for storing computer executable instructionsfor performing the novel methods (acts) of the disclosed architecture.

A user can interact with the computer 1702, programs, and data usingexternal user input devices 1728 such as a keyboard and a mouse, as wellas by voice commands facilitated by speech recognition. Other externaluser input devices 1728 can include a microphone, an IR (infrared)remote control, a joystick, a game pad, camera recognition systems, astylus pen, touch screen, gesture systems (e.g., eye movement, bodyposes such as relate to hand(s), finger(s), arm(s), head, etc.), and thelike. The user can interact with the computer 1702, programs, and datausing onboard user input devices 1730 such a touchpad, microphone,keyboard, etc., where the computer 1702 is a portable computer, forexample.

These and other input devices are connected to the microprocessingunit(s) 1704 through input/output (I/O) device interface(s) 1732 via thesystem bus 1708, but can be connected by other interfaces such as aparallel port, IEEE 1394 serial port, a game port, a USB port, an IRinterface, short-range wireless (e.g., Bluetooth) and other personalarea network (PAN) technologies, etc. The I/O device interface(s) 1732also facilitate the use of output peripherals 1734 such as printers,audio devices, camera devices, and so on, such as a sound card and/oronboard audio processing capability.

One or more graphics interface(s) 1736 (also commonly referred to as agraphics processing unit (GPU)) provide graphics and video signalsbetween the computer 1702 and external display(s) 1738 (e.g., LCD,plasma) and/or onboard displays 1740 (e.g., for portable computer). Thegraphics interface(s) 1736 can also be manufactured as part of thecomputer system board.

The computer 1702 can operate in a networked environment (e.g.,IP-based) using logical connections via a wired/wireless communicationssubsystem 1742 to one or more networks and/or other computers. The othercomputers can include workstations, servers, routers, personalcomputers, microprocessor-based entertainment appliances, peer devicesor other common network nodes, and typically include many or all of theelements described relative to the computer 1702. The logicalconnections can include wired/wireless connectivity to a local areanetwork (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), hotspot, and so on. LAN andWAN networking environments are commonplace in offices and companies andfacilitate enterprise-wide computer networks, such as intranets, all ofwhich may connect to a global communications network such as theInternet.

When used in a networking environment the computer 1702 connects to thenetwork via a wired/wireless communication subsystem 1742 (e.g., anetwork interface adapter, onboard transceiver subsystem, etc.) tocommunicate with wired/wireless networks, wired/wireless printers,wired/wireless input devices 1744, and so on. The computer 1702 caninclude a modem or other means for establishing communications over thenetwork. In a networked environment, programs and data relative to thecomputer 1702 can be stored in the remote memory/storage device, as isassociated with a distributed system. It will be appreciated that thenetwork connections shown are exemplary and other means of establishinga communications link between the computers can be used.

The computer 1702 is operable to communicate with wired/wireless devicesor entities using the radio technologies such as the IEEE 802.xx familyof standards, such as wireless devices operatively disposed in wirelesscommunication (e.g., IEEE 802.11 over-the-air modulation techniques)with, for example, a printer, scanner, desktop and/or portable computer,personal digital assistant (PDA), communications satellite, any piece ofequipment or location associated with a wirelessly detectable tag (e.g.,a kiosk, news stand, restroom), and telephone. This includes at leastWi-Fi™ (used to certify the interoperability of wireless computernetworking devices) for hotspots, WiMax, and Bluetooth™ wirelesstechnologies. Thus, the communications can be a predefined structure aswith a conventional network or simply an ad hoc communication between atleast two devices. Wi-Fi networks use radio technologies called IEEE802.11x (a, b, g, etc.) to provide secure, reliable, fast wirelessconnectivity. A Wi-Fi network can be used to connect computers to eachother, to the Internet, and to wire networks (which use IEEE802.3-related technology and functions).

What has been described above includes examples of the disclosedarchitecture. It is, of course, not possible to describe everyconceivable combination of components and/or methodologies, but one ofordinary skill in the art may recognize that many further combinationsand permutations are possible. Accordingly, the novel architecture isintended to embrace all such alterations, modifications and variationsthat fall within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.Furthermore, to the extent that the term “includes” is used in eitherthe detailed description or the claims, such term is intended to beinclusive in a manner similar to the term “comprising” as “comprising”is interpreted when employed as a transitional word in a claim.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system, comprising: a hardware processor and amemory, the hardware processor configured to execute instructions in thememory to cause the hardware processor to enable: an online contentindex of an online search engine; a personal content index associatedwith personal content stored on a computing device of a first user,wherein the personal content index is accessible to querying devices ofthe online search engine based on a sharing permission set by the firstuser; and a server component associated with the online content indexand the personal content index, the server component configured to:receive a query from a computing device of a second user, search dataassociated with the online content index based on the query, validateaccess criteria of the second user for access to the personal contentindex, wherein the validation comprises determining whether the sharingpermission set by the first user provides access to the personal contentstored on the computing device of the first user based on a physicalproximity of the computing device of the second user and the computingdevice of the first user, search data associated with the personalcontent index based on the query, and return, to the computing device ofthe second user, a search result that comprises content from the onlinecontent index and the personal content index.
 2. The system of claim 1,wherein the personal content index is generated and updated in realtimeat the computing device of the first user.
 3. The system of claim 1,wherein the server component comprises a sensor system configured togenerate realtime sensor data that is used to update the personalcontent index in realtime.
 4. The system of claim 1, wherein an indexercomponent is further configured to generate a local content index forthe personal content, and wherein the server component makes the localcontent index accessible to only the first user when the first usersubmits a query from any of a plurality of other computing nodesassociated with a user account of the first user.
 5. The system of claim1, wherein the server component is further configured to forward thequery to other personal content locations of the first user that arespread across a plurality of computing nodes associated with the firstuser, and receive search result data from the other personal contentlocations of the first user, wherein the received search result data isreturned to the computing device of the second user.
 6. The system ofclaim 5, wherein at least one of the other personal content locations ofthe first user denies access to content based on the sharing permission.7. The system of claim 1, wherein, prior to searching the personalcontent index, the server component is further configured to determinewhether the personal content stored on the computing device of the firstuser meets a quality measure.
 8. The system of claim 1, wherein, priorto searching the personal content index, the server component is furtherconfigured to determine whether the personal content stored on thecomputing device of the first user meets a confidence measure, theconfidence measure comprising a likelihood that the personal contentstored on the computing device of the first user has content relevant tothe query.
 9. A method performed by a computing system, the methodcomprising: enabling an online content index of an online search engine;enabling a personal content index associated with personal contentstored on a computing device of a first user, wherein the personalcontent index is accessible to querying devices of the online searchengine based on a sharing permission set by the first user; receiving aquery from a computing device of a second user, searching dataassociated with the online content index based on the query, validatingaccess criteria of the second user for access to the personal contentindex, wherein validating the access criteria comprises determiningwhether the sharing permission set by the first user provides access tothe personal content stored on the computing device of the first userbased on a physical proximity of the computing device of the second userand the computing device of the first user, searching data associatedwith the personal content index based on the query, and returning, tothe computing device of the second user, a search result that comprisescontent from the online content index and the personal content index.10. The method of claim 9, wherein the personal content index isgenerated and updated in realtime at the computing device of the firstuser.
 11. The method of claim 9, wherein a sensor system is configuredto generate realtime sensor data that is used to update the personalcontent index in realtime.
 12. The method of claim 9, furthercomprising: generating a local content index for the personal content;and making the local content index accessible to only the first userwhen the first user submits a query from any of a plurality of othercomputing nodes associated with a user account of the first user. 13.The method of claim 9, further comprising: forwarding the query to otherpersonal content locations of the first user that are spread across aplurality of computing nodes associated with the first user; andreceiving search result data from the other personal content locationsof the first user, wherein the received search result data is returnedto the computing device of the second user.
 14. The method of claim 9,wherein at least one of the other personal content locations of thefirst user denies access to content based on the sharing permission. 15.The method of claim 9, further comprising: prior to searching thepersonal content index, determining whether the personal content storedon the computing device of the first user meets a quality measure. 16.The method of claim 9, further comprising: prior to searching thepersonal content index, determining whether the personal content storedon the computing device of the first user meets a confidence measure,the confidence measure comprising a likelihood that the personal contentstored on the computing device of the first user has content relevant tothe query.
 17. A computer-readable hardware storage medium comprisingcomputer-executable instructions that when executed by a microprocessor,cause the microprocessor to perform acts comprising: enabling an onlinecontent index of an online search engine; enabling a personal contentindex associated with personal content stored on a computing device of afirst user, wherein the personal content index is accessible to queryingdevices of the online search engine based on a sharing permission set bythe first user; receiving a query from a computing device of a seconduser, searching data associated with the online content index based onthe query, validating access criteria of the second user for access tothe personal content index, wherein validating the access criteriacomprises determining whether the sharing permission set by the firstuser provides access to the personal content stored on the computingdevice of the first user based on a physical proximity of the computingdevice of the second user and the computing device of the first user,searching data associated with the personal content index based on thequery, and returning, to the computing device of the second user, asearch result that comprises content from the online content index andthe personal content index.
 18. The computer-readable hardware storagemedium of claim 17, wherein the personal content index is generated andupdated in realtime at the computing device of the first user.
 19. Thecomputer-readable hardware storage medium of claim 17, wherein a sensorsystem is configured to generate realtime sensor data that is used toupdate the personal content index in realtime.
 20. The computer-readablehardware storage medium of claim 17, the acts further comprising:generating a local content index for the personal content; and makingthe local content index accessible to only the first user when the firstuser submits a query from any of a plurality of other computing nodesassociated with a user account of the first user.